My Old Blog

As Christmas is fast approaching, I was reminded of this gem of a website that I blogged about last year.  If you have little ones or are teaching young children in a French language program, you may want to share this website with parents. You can customize a message from Santa to a child by answering some of the questions and sharing some images of family/friends. Please don't select that the child was "vilain" (naughty)! French Immersion teachers, consider drawing a name out of a hat once/twice a week and creating a personalized message for that child to share with the class.  This would undoubtedly rekindle the magic of Christmas among the children.  You can then introduce some of the vocabulary and expressions from the video message with the children in the classroom. Last year, my 4-year old daughter was listening with total rapture while listening to her personalized message from Père Noël himself. Visit perenoelmagique.ca to create your message! ...

I have blogged about BookBox in the past when I was using it to teach Portuguese to my 4-year old daughter.  I am very elated to see there is also a French version of BookBox as an app you can use to listen to stories and read along in French. The stories are animated with a read-along feature, highlighting the words as they are being read.  It apparently has been scientifically proven that the read-along (SLS) feature strengthens reading skills as words are highlighted in sync with the spoken word. What I really like about BookBox is that the stories are available in several languages.  Although I see the value of an immersive approach to learning a language, I can also see the benefits of supporting the target language acquisition through one's native language.  My daughter, for example, has listened to stories both in English (her native language) and Portuguese and French (target languages).  She has shown an ability to form associations between w...

I recently installed the app for BookBox on my Android tablet.   This free app consists of several stories in multiple languages (English, Portuguese, Spanish, French).  Stories can be viewed on Youtube while words spoken are highlighted on the bottom of the screen to indicate which word is being read. My 4-year old daughter is enjoying these stories, listening to them in both English and Portuguese.  She listened to the story in English first (in which she is fully conversant), then in Portuguese (her target language).  I would highly recommend using Bookbox as an Android App for any language learner.  You can install Bookbox on your Android tablet or phone by visiting Google Play store at this link.

This is a video tutorial introducing Il était une histoire , one of my favorite literacy sites for children in French. I am currently using this site in my class with Grade 6 French Immersion students for our Guided Reading sessions.